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Offshoring describes the relocation by a company of a business process from one country to another—typically an operational process, such as manufacturing, or supporting processes, such as accounting. Even state governments employ offshoring.^[1] More recently, offshoring has been associated primarily with the sourcing of technical and administrative services supporting domestic and global operations from outside the home country, by means of internal (captive) or external (outsourcing) delivery models.^[2]

The term is in use in several distinct but closely related ways. It is sometimes used broadly to include substitution of a service from any foreign source for a service formerly produced internally to the firm. In other cases, only imported services from subsidiaries or other closely related suppliers are included. A further complication is that intermediate goods, such as partially completed computers, are not consistently included in the scope of the term.^[3]

Offshoring can be seen in the context of either production offshoring or services offshoring. After its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, the People's Republic of China emerged as a prominent destination for production offshoring. Another focus area has been the software industry as part of Global Software Development and developing Global Information Systems. After technical progress in telecommunications improved the possibilities of trade in services, India became a country leading in this domain though many parts of the world are now emerging as offshore destinations.

The economic logic is to reduce costs. If some people can use some of their skills more cheaply than others, those people have the comparative advantage. The idea is that countries should freely trade the items that cost the least for them to produce.

Frequently used terms [link]

Offshoring is defined as the movement of a business process done at a company in one country to the same or another company in another, different country. Almost always work is moved because of a lower cost of operations in the new location. More recently, offshoring drivers also include access to qualified personnel abroad, in particular in technical professions, and increasing speed to market. ^[4] Offshoring is sometimes contrasted with outsourcing or offshore outsourcing. Outsourcing is the movement of internal business processes to an external organizational unit. Outsourcing refers to the process by which an organization gives part of its work to another firm / organization and makes it responsible for most of the applications as well as the design of the enterprise business process. This process is done under restrictions and strategies in order to establish consistency with the offshore outsourcing organizations. Many companies nowadays outsource various professional areas in the company such as e-mail services, payroll and call center. These jobs are being handled by other organizations that specialize in each sector allowing the off-shoring company to focus more on other business concerns . However, subcontracting in the same country would be outsourcing, but not offshoring. A company moving an internal business unit from one country to another would be offshoring or physical restructuring, but not outsourcing. A company subcontracting a business unit to a different company in another country would be both outsourcing and offshoring.

Related terms include nearshoring, which implies relocation of business processes to (typically) lower cost foreign locations, but in close geographical proximity (e.g., shifting United States-based business processes to Canada/Latin America); inshoring, which means picking services within a country; and bestshoring or rightshoring, picking the "best shore" based on various criteria. Business process outsourcing (BPO) refers to outsourcing arrangements when entire business functions (such as Finance & Accounting, Customer Service, etc.) are outsourced. More specific terms can be found in the field of software development - for example Global Information System as a class of systems being developed for / by globally distributed teams.

A further term sometimes associated with offshoring is bodyshopping which is the practice of using offshored resources and personnel to do small disaggregated tasks within a business environment, without any broader intention to offshore an entire business function.

Production off-shoring [link]

Production offshoring also known as physical restructuring of established products involves relocation of physical manufacturing processes to a lower-cost destination. Examples of production offshoring include the manufacture of electronic components in Costa Rica, production of apparel, toys, and consumer goods in China, Vietnam etc.

Product design, research and the development process that leads to new products, are relatively difficult to offshore. This is because research and development to improve products and create new reference designs requires a skill set that is harder to obtain in regions with cheap labor. For this reason, in many cases only the manufacturing will be offshored by a company wishing to reduce costs.

However, there is a relationship between offshoring and patent system strength. This is because companies under a strong patent system are not afraid to offshore work because their work will remain their property. Conversely, companies in countries with weak patent systems have an increased fear of intellectual property theft from foreign vendors or workers, and, therefore, have less offshoring.

Physical restructuring got its big push when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) made it easier for manufacturers to shift production facilities from the US to Mexico. This trend later shifted to China, which offered cheap prices through very low wage rates, few workers' rights laws, a fixed currency pegged to the US dollar, (currently fixed to a basket of economies) cheap loans, land, and factories for new companies, few environmental regulations, and huge economies of scale based on cities with populations over a million workers dedicated to producing a single kind of product. However, many companies are reluctant to move high value-added production of leading-edge products to China because of lax enforcement of intellectual property laws.^[5] CAFTA has increased the velocity at which physical restructuring is occurring.

IT-enabled Services offshoring [link]

The growth of IT-enabled services offshoring is linked to the availability of large amounts of reliable and affordable communication infrastructure following the telecommunication and Internet expansion of the late 1990s. This was seen all the way up to the year 2000. Coupled with the digitization of many services, it was possible to shift the actual production location of services to low cost countries in a manner theoretically transparent to end-users. Services include administrative services, such as finance and accounting, HR, and legal; call centers; marketing and sales services; IT infrastructure; application development; and knowledge services, including engineering support, product design, research and development, and analytics.

India first benefited from the offshoring trend as it has a large pool of English speaking people^[6] and technically proficient manpower. India's offshoring industry took root in low-end IT functions in the early 1990s and has since moved to back-office processes such as call centers and transaction processing. In the late 1990s, India's abundant and well qualified software engineering talent combined with massive demand from the Y2K problem^{[citation needed]} helped to move India up the value chain to attract large-scale software development projects for US based customers. This spawned the neologism Bangalored, used to indicate a layoff, often systemic, and usually resulting from corporate outsourcing to lower wage economies – derived from Bangalore in India, where some of the first outsource centers were located.^[7]

Currently, India's engineering talent has made India the offshoring destination of global firms like HP, IBM, Accenture, Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Oracle Corporation, Cisco, SAP, and BEA.

Because of inflation, high domestic interest rates, robust economic growth and increased IT offshoring, Indian IT sector has witnessed 10 - 15% wage growth in the 21st century. Consequently, Indian's operations and firms are concerned that they are becoming too expensive in comparison with competition from the other offshoring destinations. To maintain high growth rates, attempts have been made to grow up the value chain and diversify to other high-end work in addition to software and hardware engineering. These jobs include research and development, equity analysis, tax-return processing, radiological analysis, medical transcription, and more.

The choice of offshoring destination is often made according to cultural concerns. Japanese companies are starting to outsource to China, where large numbers of Japanese speakers can be found — particularly in the city of Dalian, which was Japanese-occupied Chinese territory for decades (this is discussed in the book The World is Flat). German companies tend to outsource to Poland and Romania, where proficiency in German is common.^[8] French companies outsource to North Africa for similar reasons. For Australian IT companies, Indonesia is one of the major choice of offshoring destination. Near shore location, common time zone and adequate IT work force are the reasons of offshoring IT services to Indonesia.

Other offshoring destinations include Mexico, Central and South America, the Philippines, South Africa and Eastern European countries.

The Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) made nearshoring more attractive between the Central American countries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic and the US.

Innovation offshoring [link]

Once companies are comfortable with services offerings and started realizing the cost savings, many high-tech product companies, including some in Silicon Valley, started offshoring innovation work to countries like South Africa, India, China, Mexico, and Russia. Accessing the talent pools in these countries has the potential to cut costs or even shorten product lifecycles. Developing countries like India are usually involved in this practice.

When offshoring knowledge work, firms heavily rely on the availability of technical personnel at offshore locations. In order to secure access to talent, Western firms often establish collaborative relationships with technical universities abroad and thereby customize university programs to serve their particular needs. Examples include universities in Shanghai, such as Tong-Ji University, where German firms and scholars co-sponsor labs, courses, and provide internships. Similar examples of collaborative arrangements can be found in Eastern Europe, e.g. Romania. ^[9]

Re-shoring [link]

"Re-shoring" (sometimes "Backshoring"^[10]) is offshoring that has been brought back onshore.

Focus and strategy in offshoring [link]

To survive in the outsourcing world, strength in multiple terms is necessary. On one hand, while it is important to have robust processes and structures in place, with manpower to execute projects, on the other hand it is necessary for firms to have their strategy firmly in place.^[11] While the Vision and Mission define the ethos of any enterprise, irrespective of the field in it, yet this is necessary to drive the wheel of a company forward. It is undoubted that strategy varies as an offshoring enterprise evolves and goes through its various phases of growth. While nascent players may look at opportunities to grab and work upon, established players have a well set and defined plan of action. Players in the growth phase are the ones who have strategy targeted at achieving the ulterior goal and demonstrate perseverance and drive to achieve the same. These trends are truly reflective of the path that some of the established players today have had in mind. Being a business model, which has a unique driving force behind is, the fact that the industry as a whole has coped rather well with the economic downturn. For those who have grown and escalated in this scenario, it is their strategy in view of their ultimate vision and mission to which credit must be attributed.^[12]

Transfer of intellectual property [link]

Offshoring is often enabled by the transfer of valuable information to the offshore site. Such information and training enables the remote workers to produce results of comparable value previously produced by internal employees. When such transfer includes protected materials, as confidential documents and trade secrets, protected by non-disclosure agreements, then intellectual property has been transferred or exported. The documentation and valuation of such exports is quite difficult, but should be considered since it comprises items that may be regulated or taxable.

Debate [link]

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (December 2007)

Offshoring has been a controversial issue spurring heated debates among economists, some of which overlap those related to the topic of free trade. It is seen as benefiting both the origin and destination country through free trade, providing jobs to the destination country and lower cost of goods and services to the origin country. This makes both sides see increased gross domestic product (GDP). And the total number of jobs increase in both countries since those workers in the origin country that lost their job can move to higher-value jobs in which their country has a comparative advantage.

On the other hand, job losses and wage erosion in developed countries have sparked opposition to offshoring. Experts argue that the quality of any new jobs in developed countries are less than the jobs lost and offer lower pay. Economists against offshoring charge that currency manipulation by governments and their central banks causes the difference in labor cost creating an illusion of comparative advantage. Further, they point out that even more educated highly trained workers with higher-value jobs such as software engineers, accountants, radiologists, and journalists in the developed world have been displaced by highly educated and cheaper workers from India and China. On May 1, 2002, Economist and former Ambassador Ernest H. Preeg testified before the Senate committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs that China, for instance, pegs its currency to the dollar at a sub-par value in violation of Article IV of the International Monetary Fund Articles of Agreement which state that no nation shall manipulate its currency to gain a market advantage.^[13] Traditionally "safe" developed world jobs in R&D and the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields are now perceived to be endangered in these countries as higher proportions of workers are trained for these fields in developing nations. Economists such as Paul Craig Roberts claim that those economists who promote offshoring misunderstand the difference between comparative advantage and absolute advantage.

Level-of-service concerns[link]

With the off-shoring of call-center type applications, debate has also surfaced that this practice does serious damage to the quality of customer service and technical support that customers receive from companies who do it. Many companies have caught much public ire for their decisions to use foreign labor for customer service and technical support, mostly because of the apparent language barrier that it creates. While some nations have a high level of younger, skilled workers who are capable of speaking English as one of their native languages, their English skills have caused debate in North America and Europe.^{[citation needed]}

Criticisms of outsourcing from much of the American public have been a response to what they view as very poor customer service and technical support being provided by overseas workers attempting to communicate with Americans.

Supply chain concerns[link]

Some claim that companies lose control and visibility across their extended supply chain under outsourcing, creating increased risks. A 2005 quantitative survey of 121 electronics industry participants by Industry Directions Inc and the Electronics Supply Chain Association (ESCA) found that 69% of respondents said they had less control over at least 5 of their key supply chain processes since the outsourced model took hold, while 66% of providers felt their aggregate risk with customers was high or very high.^{[citation needed]} 36% of providers responded that they felt an increased risk of uncertainty compared to their uncertainty risk before the rise to prominence of the outsourced model.^{[citation needed]} 62% of respondents described as "problematic" at least two core trading partner management practices, which included performance management and simple agreement on results.^{[citation needed]} 40% of all respondents encountered resistance to sharing risk in outsourced partnership agreements, according to the research.^{[citation needed]}

Competitive concerns[link]

The transfer of knowledge outside a country may create competitors to the original companies themselves. Chinese manufacturers are already selling their goods directly to their overseas customers, without going through their previous domestic intermediaries that originally contracted their services. In the 1990s and 2000s, American automakers increasingly turned to China to create parts for their vehicles. By 2006, China leveraged this know-how and announced that they will begin competition with American automakers in their home market by selling fully Chinese automobiles directly to Americans. When a company moves the production of goods and services to another country, the investment that companies would otherwise make in the domestic market is transferred to the foreign market. Corporate money spent on factories, training, and taxes, which would otherwise be spent in the market of the company is then spent in the foreign market. As production increases in the foreign market, qualified and experienced domestic workers leave or are forced out of their jobs, often permanently leaving the industry. At some point, dramatically fewer domestic workers are left who are qualified to perform the work. This makes the domestic market dependent on the foreign market for those goods and services, thereby strategically weakening the "hollowed-out" domestic country. In effect, offshoring creates and strengthens the competitive industries of the foreign country while strategically weakening the domestic country.^{[dubious – discuss]}

However, employment data has cast doubt on this claim. For example, IT employment in the United States has recently reached pre-2001 levels^[14][15] and has been rising since. The number of jobs lost to offshoring is less than 1 percent of the total US labor market.^[16] According to a study by the Heritage foundation, outsourcing represents a very small proportion of jobs lost in the US. The total number of jobs lost to offshoring, both manufacturing and technical represent only 4 percent of the total jobs lost in the US. Major reasons for cutting jobs are from contract completion and downsizing.^[17] Some economists and commentators claim that the offshoring phenomenon is way overblown.^[17]

Retraining concerns[link]

One solution often offered for domestic workers displaced by offshoring is retraining to new jobs. Some displaced workers are highly educated and possess graduate qualifications. Retraining to their current level in another field may not be an option because of the years of study and cost of education involved. Anecdotal evidence also suggests they would be rejected for being overqualified.

Effects of factor of production mobility [link]

According to classical economics, the three factors of production are land, labor, and capital. Offshoring relies heavily on the mobility of two of these factors. That is, how offshoring affects economies depends on how easily capital and labor can be repurposed. Land, as a factor of production, is generally seen to have little or no mobility potential.

The effects of capital mobility on offshoring have been widely discussed. In microeconomics, a corporation must be able to spend working capital to afford the initial costs of offshoring. If the state heavily regulates how a corporation can spend its working capital, it will not be able to offshore its operations. For the same reason the macroeconomy must be free for offshoring to succeed. Generally, those who favor offshoring support capital mobility, and those who oppose offshoring call for greater regulation.

Labor mobility also plays a major role, and it is hotly debated. When computers and the Internet made work electronically portable, the forces of free market resulted in a global mobility of work in the services industry. Most theories that argue offshoring eventually benefits domestic workers assume that those workers will be able to obtain new jobs, even if they have to obtain employment by downpricing themselves back into the labor market (by accepting lower salaries) or by retraining themselves in a new field. Foreign workers benefit from new jobs and higher wages when the work moves to them.

History [link]

In the developed world, moving jobs out of the country dates to at least the 1960s^[18] and has continued since then. It was characterized primarily by the transferring of factories from the developed to the developing world. This offshoring and closing of factories has caused a structural change in the developed world from an industrial to a post-industrial service society.

During the 20th century, the decreasing costs of transportation and communication crossed with great disparities on pay rates made increased offshoring from wealthier countries to less wealthy countries financially feasible for many companies. Further, the growth of the Internet, particularly fiber-optic intercontinental long haul capacity, and the World Wide Web reduced "transportation" costs for many kinds of information work to near zero.^[19]

With the development of the Internet, many new categories of work such as call centres, computer programming, reading medical data such as X-rays and magnetic resonance imaging, medical transcription, income tax preparation, and title searching are being offshored.

Before the 1990s, Ireland was one of the poorest countries in the EU. Because of Ireland's relatively low corporate tax rates, US companies began offshoring of software, electronic, and pharmaceutical intellectual property to Ireland for export. This helped create a high-tech "boom" and which led to Ireland becoming one of the richest EU countries.^[19]

In 1994 the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. As concerns are widespread about uneven bargaining powers, and risks and benefits, negotiations are often difficult, such that the plan to create free trade areas (such as Free Trade Area of the Americas) has not yet been successful. In 2005, offshoring of skilled work, also referred to as knowledge work, dramatically increased from the US, which fed the growing worries about threats of job loss.^[19]

See also[link]

• Anti-Globalism
• Call center security
• Globally Integrated Enterprise
• Globality
• Homeshoring
• Inshoring
• Offshoring Research Network
• Outsourcing
• Personal offshoring
• Restructuring
• Runaway production
• Programmers Guild
• Follow-the-sun
• Decline and Fall of the American Programmer
• Job migration
• Hybridshoring

By sector:

• Business process outsourcing
• Information technology consulting
• Legal outsourcing
• Offshore software outsourcing
• Offshoring IT Services

Literature [link]

• Ashok Deo Bardhan and Cynthia Kroll, "The New Wave of Outsourcing" (November 2, 2003). Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics. Fisher Center Research Reports: Report #1103. http://repositories.cdlib.org/iber/fcreue/reports/1103
• Alan E. Blinder, Offshoring: The Next Industrial Revolution?, in: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, No.2, March/April 2006, 113-128.
• Vinaj Couto, Mahadeva Mani, Vikas Sehgal, Arie Y. Lewin, Stephan Manning, Jeff W. Russell, Offshoring 2.0: Contracting Knowledge and Innovation to Expand Global Capabilities Offshoring Research Network 2007 Service Provider Report.
• Georg Erber, Aida Sayed-Ahmed, Offshore Outsourcing - A Global Shift in the Present IT Industry , in: Intereconomics, Volume 40, Number 2, March 2005, 100 - 112
• Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century 2005 ISBN 0-374-29288-4
• Gary Gereffi and Vivek Wadhwa, "Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate: Placing the United States on a Level Playing Field with India and China" (2006) http://memp.pratt.duke.edu/outsourcing
• Ron Hira and Anil Hira, with forward by Lou Dobbs, Outsourcing America: What's behind Our National Crisis and how we can reclaim American Jobs. (May 2005). ISBN 0-8144-0868-0.
• Bradford Jensen and Lori Kletzer (September 2005), "Tradable Services: Understanding the Scope and Impact of Services Outsourcing", Institute for International Economics Working Paper No. 05-9 SSRN 803906
• Mark Kobayashi-Hillary, 'Who Moved My Job?' (2008). ISBN 978-1409271079.
• Mark Kobayashi-Hillary, 'Building a Future with BRICs: The Next Decade for Offshoring' (Nov 2007). ISBN 978-3-540-46453-2.
• Mark Kobayashi-Hillary & Dr Richard Sykes, 'Global Services: Moving to a Level Playing Field' (May 2007). ISBN 978-1-902505-83-1.
• William Lazonick, Globalization of the ICT Labor Force, in: The Oxford Handbook on ICTs, eds. Claudio Ciborra, Robin Mansell, Danny Quah, Roger Solverstone, Oxford University Press, (forthcoming)
• Arie Y. Lewin and Vinaj Couto, Next Generation Offshoring: The Globalization of Innovation Offshoring Research Network 2006 Survey Report.
• Mario Lewis, IT Application Service Offshoring: An Insider's Guide, Sage Publications, ISBN 0-7619-3525-8, ISBN 978-0-7619-3525-4
• Catherine Mann, Accelerating the Globalization of America: The Role for Information Technology, Institute for International Economics, Washington D.C., June 2006,^[20] ISBN paper 0-88132-390-X
• Stephan Manning, Silvia Massini and Arie Y. Lewin, "A Dynamic Perspective on Next-Generation Offshoring: The Global Sourcing of Science and Engineering Talent", in: Academy of Management Perspectives, Vol. 22, No.3, October 2008, 35-54.^[21]
• Stephan Manning, Joerg Sydow and Arnold Windeler, "Securing Access to Lower-Cost Talent Globally: The Dynamics of Active Embedding and Field Structuration”, in: Regional Studies, Forthcoming (2011).^[22]
• McKinsey Global Institute; “Offshoring: Is It a Win-Win Game?”, August 2003
• Bharat Vagadia, "Outsourcing to India: A Legal Handbook", August 2007, Springer, ISBN 978-3-540-72219-9
• Atul Vashistha and Avinash Vashistha, The Offshore Nation, ISBN 0-07-146812-9
• Wolfgang Messner, "Intelligent IT Offshoring to India. Roadmaps for Emerging Business Landscapes", Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-230-24626-3
• Toledo Mario, "Outsourcing and Offshoring:Companies and governments immerged in a complex environment" a Research Project for Global Innovation at Hamburg University of Technology, August 2007, [1]

References[link]

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (May 2010)

Look up offshoring in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

News[link]

• http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm
• BusinessWeek online on "Let's Offshore The Lawyers"
• Offshore Outsource Savings Can Be Elusive, Survey Shows
• Don't be afraid of offshoring - by Diana Farrell
• Ensuring India's offshoring future - Article by Diana Farrell, Sascha Stürze & Noshir Kaka based on a 12-month research project conducted by the McKinsey Global Institute on the "Emerging Global Labor Market" (see Research section below)
• Latin America: Outsourcing's New Hot Spot
• GE ex-CEO Welch blasts opponents of offshoring by Anupama Chandrasekaran, Forbes.com
• At Mysore We are Running a US Law Firm by Shelley Singh (Economic Times)
• Fortune 500 firms driving LPO industry by Praveen Bose (Business Standard)
• U.S. corporates outsource legal work to India by Anjali Prayag (The Hindu Business Line)
• New York Firm Takes On India... "Very Nice!" by Heather Greenwood Davis (The Globe and Mail -- Lexpert Magazine)
• LPOs add more punch to India action by Sushmita Mohapatra & P P Thimmaya (The Economic Times)
• Now, for some LPO action by Sachin Malhan (The Hindu)

Research[link]

• Offshoring Research Network
• Book:: Offshoring IT Services : A Framework for Managing Outsourced Projects
• Report from the BCS on offshoring and outsourcing with regard to IT
• Report by McKinsey and Nasscom regarding skills and quality of Indian workforce
• Essay on the "Fear of Offshoring" by Alan S. Blinder, Princeton University
• Zinnov Report on Product Innovation: Growing up the value chain

Internet articles[link]

• Nearshore outsourcing is more cost efficient than offshore outsourcing - By H. Boersen, W. Gils (van) & M. Zantinge
• Risks, Rewards, Challenges and Opportunities in Offshore Outsourcing By Akshay Upadhye
• Offshore Outsourcing of Data Services by Insured Institutions and Associated Consumer Privacy Risks (www.fdic.gov)

The Dutchess is the debut studio album by American recording artist Fergie, who is a member of The Black Eyed Peas. The album was released on September 19, 2006. As of 2008, the album has sold more than six million copies worldwide. The song, "All That I Got (The Make Up Song)" has been remixed slightly and used as one of the two main music themes for Tyra Banks' talk show, Tyra. Edited and Parental Advisory versions of the album were available. In Japan, the United States and Australia, deluxe versions of the album were released. For sales in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, the Parental Advisory version is the only Universal album edited in Peru.

The album produced 5 top five singles in the U.S., including three number-one hits on the Billboard Hot 100, "London Bridge", "Big Girls Don't Cry", and "Glamorous", as well as the number two single "Fergalicious" and the number five single "Clumsy". All five of the aforementioned singles have sold over two million digital downloads each in the U.S., thus setting a new record in the digital era for the most multi-platinum singles from one album.^[1]

Background[link]

The title is a derivation and misspelling of the title "The Duchess of York", as Fergie (a derivative of her last name "Ferguson") and Sarah Ferguson, the real Duchess of York, share a surname and nickname. will.i.am was an executive producer for the album. Ludacris, B-Real from Cypress Hill and Rita Marley all make guest appearances.^[2] Fergie has made it clear in interviews that she will still be an active member of the Black Eyed Peas.

In Australia, with the success of her first number-one single "Big Girls Don't Cry", the album peaked at number one on the ARIA Albums Chart on July 23, 45 weeks after it was released. The album has shifted over 210,000 copies and is certified triple platinum by ARIA. It has spent an impressive 62 weeks inside the nation's top 50, and 21 weeks inside the top 10.^[3] It spent four consecutive weeks at number one.^[4] Fergie has also had five consecutive top 4 hits from a debut album, the first artist to do so was Delta Goodrem with her 2003 album, Innocent Eyes, which had five consecutive number ones. Due to the re-release of The Dutchess in the U.S, the original album bounced back from #104 to #28, because of the 11,000 copies of the deluxe edition sold in its first week.

On December 21, 2007, Fergie performed "Finally" on the 9th Annual A Home for the Holidays special on CBS and on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve 2008 on ABC, where Ryan Seacrest announced that it would be a single in 2008. It was released to radio on February 26, 2008.^[5] The music video for "Finally" was filmed by Marc Webb, but has yet to be released.^[6] Some songs were written with Fergie's old band, Wild Orchid members Renee Sands, and Stefanie Ridel.

Singles[link]

"London Bridge" was released as the lead single from the album on July 18, 2006, and was Fergie's first single as a solo artist. As of January 1, 2008, the single has sold 1,792,912 copies in the U.S. "Fergalicious" is the second single from the album, The Dutchess. It features Black Eyed Peas member will.i.am, who also produced the track. "Fergalicious" was not officially released as the second single in the UK, where "Glamorous" was officially made the second single instead. However, "Fergalicious" still managed to chart at number 26 on the UK Official Download Chart and will be released as the fourth single there, over a year after the song's initial release, as a double A-side with "Clumsy". This is possibly due to the huge success of "Big Girls Don't Cry" in the UK which reached #2, saved the album, and even made it reach a new peak position at #18. As of August 2008, the single has sold over 2,700,000 copies.

"Glamorous" is the third single of The Dutchess; the song features Ludacris. The beat was originally presented to Gwen Stefani as a remix for her single "Luxurious", but the singer ultimately decided not to use it. Ludacris' verse is leftover from that version. In March 2007, the song became Fergie's second number-one single in the United States. The single was released on March 19, 2007 in the UK and was the second single taken from the album. The single was not as successful in Latin America (excluding Mexico, where it proved to be a hit) as "London Bridge" and "Fergalicious". "Glamorous" is the fourth single from the album in Brazil, where "Big Girls Don't Cry" was released as the third single. Fergie sang this song along with "Big Girls Don't Cry" at the Concert for Diana. As of March 2008, the single has sold 2,300,000 copies. "Big Girls Don't Cry", also known as "Big Girls Don't Cry (Personal)", is a song written by Fergie and Toby Gad for Fergie's debut solo album The Dutchess (2006). The song was released as the album's fourth single in 2007 (see 2007 in music) and topped the charts in several countries, most notably in Australia (for nine consecutive weeks - also becoming the number-one single in the ARIA's Year End Charts for 2007), and in the United States. It was the most played song of 2007 in Brazil (the success of the song there is due to Big Brother Brasil, which chose the song as the theme of the most popular couple of the show) and the most downloaded track in the U.S., with astonishing sales of more than 2,750,000 copies sold. In July 2007, Fergie performed the song at the Concert for Diana and Live Earth. By the end of August 2007, the song became Fergie's third number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It was nominated in the 'Best Female Pop Vocal Performance' category at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards, which was held February 10, 2008.

"Clumsy" was written by Fergie and will.i.am, sampling Little Richard's "The Girl Can't Help It", Deee-Lite's "Who Was That", and a small part of MC Lyte's "Poor Georgie". The song was released as the album's fifth single. The song peaked at number five in the U.S. on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the fifth consecutive top-five single from The Dutchess. Fergie has also had five consecutive top 5 hits from a debut album on the ARIA Charts in Australia making her the first artist to do so since Delta Goodrem in 2003 with Innocent Eyes who had five consecutive number ones. Initially "Clumsy" was Fergie's least successful single, but later it was replaced by "Finally". "Here I Come" is a song produced and featured will.i.am. The track was released as a single in Australia in January 2008. It reached 22 on Australia Singles Chart and 122 on Billboard Hot 100. It was used on the commercials that advertised the debut of the new channel CW and in a Motorola Rockr commercial for Brazil and Portugal featuring Fergie. "Finally" is the sixth single from The Dutchess. It was sent to U.S. radio on February 26, 2008. It is the album's least successful single. It featured John Legend on piano.

Promotional singles[link]

"Party People" was released as the first single from Nelly's fifth studio album Brass Knuckles. The song is also a single from the Deluxe Edition of The Dutchess. It reached 40 in the USA and 14 in the UK.

"Labels or Love" is the second single from the Deluxe Edition of The Dutchess, and eighth overall. The song did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100, but in UK it reached 56. This is the last single from the album and a music video was filmed.

Critical reception[link]

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
About.com	[7]
Allmusic	[8]
Robert Christgau	[9]
Entertainment Weekly	B+[10]
Now Magazine	(C)[11]
Prefix Magazine	[12]
Rolling Stone	[13]
Slant Magazine	[14]
Yahoo! Music	(B)[15]

Initial critical response to The Dutchess was mixed. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 58, based on 15 reviews, which indicates "average reviews". Andy Kellman from Allmusic gave to the album a rating of 2/5 stars and claimed that: "The Dutchess has all the characteristics of a release fronted by someone who has been itching to go solo and prove herself, once and for all, as a versatile force all her own". But that "The whole process, produced mostly by fellow Pea will.i.am, is mildly entertaining but tremendously taxing".^[16] A positive review came from Bill Lamb of About.com, who gave to the album a rating of 4/5 stars. He stated that "Fergie proves herself a skilled entertainer that can make you dance, laugh, nearly cry, and just have a really good time." He finished the review, saying that "The Dutchess is one of the top debuts of the year. Similar to Gwen Stefani's experience, this album is good enough to pull into question the wisdom of Fergie sticking with The Black Eyed Peas or considering striking out on her own.^[17] Another favorable review came from Entertainment Weekly's Leah Greenblatt' who say that "The Dutchess reaches further than most albums by contemporary divas."^[18] The Uncut review of The Dutchess was also positive, considering the album "One of the most rambunctiously entertaining and high-spirited records of 2006". Dan Gennoe from Dot Music was also favorable to the album, naming The Dutchess as an "exceptionally random R&B mixtape".^[19] Kathryn Perry from The Phoenix described The Dutchess as "An eclectic, danceable collection of hip-hop, R&B, and pop confections".^[20]

Chart performance[link]

The Dutchess debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 in the United States with sales of more than 150,000 in its first week.^[21] 51 weeks after its release, The Dutchess climbed to a new peak of number two in the U.S.^[22] In the United Kingdom, it debuted at number 27 with 9,110 copies sold.^{[citation needed]} The song "Losing My Ground" was the upcoming single, though it was replaced for "Glamorous" for unknown reasons. In a matter of weeks it dropped out of the chart altogether until the success of "Glamorous" when the album shot up from 77 to 28. Again, after the success of "Big Girls Don't Cry", the album climbed to 19 and after dropping a few places, went back up to its number 18 peak. To date, the album has produced three Billboard Hot 100 number-one hits, including "London Bridge", "Glamorous", and "Big Girls Don't Cry", with "Fergalicious" peaking at number two. Fifth single "Clumsy" peaked at the number five on the chart. A remix of "Big Girls Don't Cry", which features Sean Kingston, became an iTunes-only single and the new song "Pick It Up" (which appears on the Japanese re-released edition of the album) will become a single in Japan.^{[citation needed]}

Track listing[link]

(*) Denotes vocal producer

Charts and certifications[link]

Awards[link]

MTV Australia Video Music Awards

• Sexiest Video – "Fergalicious" (2007)

MuchMusic Video Awards

• Best International Video – "Fergalicious" (2007)
• Best International Video – Artist (2008)

Juno Awards

• Best International Album – The Dutchess (2008)

ASCAP Awards

• Song of the Year – "Big Girls Don't Cry" (2008)

MTV Japan Video Music Awards

• Best Female Video – "Big Girls Don't Cry" (2008)

Teen Choice Awards

• Best (2008)

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Dutchess at Metacritic